The NRA are keen on the notion that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. Well, they’re half right. Guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people (unless they are pistol whipped to death, of course).

There’s been an awful lot of talk about gun control recently following a speight of horrific mass shootings in the US, and if not for the spineless Senate, America might have a new, if insipid, gun control bill by now.

It may be a crude and limited firearm, but a gun is a gun when it’s pointed in your face (I presume). This is also a gun that wouldn’t be detected by a metal detector, making it in many ways even more desirable for your day-to-day terrorist. And because it can be 3D printed, it can essentially be in the hands of anyone with an internet connection and the £1000 or so it currently costs for a 3D printer (you can get an inkjet for about £15 now, so you can see how the cost will come down over time).

So now guns join the ranks of music and video in being essentially impossible to control. However, thankfully, the bullet is a far, far more complicated beast than the gun, which is essentially a pin on a spring. Of course, you can also make your own bullets (or ammunition, as this disturbingly matter-of-fact Yahoo! Answers thread suggests) but would require a bit more precision engineering, tools and skill, and the possibility of losing several fingers on the way to mastering the technique, then simple 3D printing. They also have to made of metals, so unless you can somehow pull of the ‘keyring trick’ like John Malkovich in the 1993 film ‘In the Line of Fire’, airline security protocol should still have it’s way.

So really, the politician and policy makers both here and in the US need to start moving the debate, from gun control to bullet control. This way, when the next disillusioned teenager looks on the internet for a way to make to the pain go away, he’d be better off 3D printing a pea shooter than a gun.

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/gun-control-is-pointless-its-time-for-bullet-control/feed/0alhodgJohn Malkovich from In the Line of FireDeath of the Bogeyman – Musings on the death of Margaret Thatcherhttps://alhodg.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/death-of-the-bogeyman-musings-on-the-death-of-margaret-thatcher/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/death-of-the-bogeyman-musings-on-the-death-of-margaret-thatcher/#respondSat, 13 Apr 2013 21:48:32 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=155]]>

Thatcher shoots her patented ‘blue iron’ look.

In a time of economic and social turmoil, the people need a Government with decisiveness and new thinking. Margaret Thatcher had both of these in spades.

In that sense, she would be welcome back as Tory leader today, as the current leadership has neither of these facets. In fact, you could say that her huge imprint on British politics is the reason that the past 2 Governments have been unable to bring anything meaningfully new to the British economy. Both surfed the wave of the big banking boom without realising it was about to wipe out, and we (or to be more accurately, Scotland) still think North Sea Gas and Oil is the future of UK energy, rather than our other abundant natural energy sources such as wave, wind and tidal (and coal?).

She also in effect caused the Labour party to abandon socialism as a way to gaining the middle-ground, and with it power, and in doing so continue Thatcherism well into the 1990s. By doing this, Labour has robbed us of any meaningful political alternative – just 3 equally bland parties with very few differences of opinion on the main topics.

So we are all still living in the shadow on Thatcherism. We have more purchasing choice in most things (whether we wanted it or not), many people gained economically from Right to Buy and utility privatisation (whether we wanted it or not), and there is no meaningful economic or political alternative to get us out of our current malaise.

However, some people feel Thatcher’s shadow much more deeply than others.

A tour of Thatcher’s Britain in 2013

You don’t need a theme park to visit Thatcher’s Britain – it still exists in the former industrial towns of the north.

“Get a job, you lazy oik!”

Sheffield is still scarred by the massive and sudden collapse of the steel industry in the 80s & 90s, but being a major city, has had it’s share of regeneration and gentrification (as have Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle etc..) I think for those in the south that viewed Thatcher’s Britain from a bubble of prosperity, the fact that the icons of the north now have nice enough city centres and “even actually some rather nice restaurants” makes them think the 80s are dead and buried.

However, if you want to take a tour of Thatcher’s Britain you still can. Get a car and a map of Yorkshire. Cross out any city, rural area, coastal area and the whole of North Yorkshire (let’s face it, it’s not really Yorkshire – it’s a northern enclave of Buckinghamshire). Then just go, well, basically anywhere!

The whole of the rest of Yorkshire is basically a series of small to medium sized towns built on single industries which, whilst in various levels of repair by the 1980s, were utterly ground down by the 1990s. And most have never recovered.

It only takes one generation to go from very well paid ‘jobs for life’ to decades of unemployment, struggle, cold, evictions, and a lack of opportunity and hope for their children for an entire area to become a ghost town. Why would businesses invest their money in such dark, grey, crime and drug addled regions? Why would the clever children stay and fight the hard fight when there are more opportunities in nearby towns. Why wouldn’t the unemployed and immasculated former breadwinners, facing handing a bleak future to their children, not just hang themselves (many did). These places aren’t hideous because the people there are inherrently idle, devil-dog owning, binge-drinking idiots (though many are) – it’s because they had their heart ripped out, and replaced by nothing but bitterness, despair, hate and regret.

And if you think I’m exaggerating, I know a lovely campsite in Grimethorpe you can visit…

The North’s Myth of Thatcher

Growing up in an irreligious family in South Yorkshire in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was the nearest thing to the Devil that we had. No-one simply said ‘Thatcher’, they spat it. But being only 12 when she left power, I wasn’t able to really understand this bile – I just had to accept it as truth. I’d never met an openly Tory voter until I went to University age 18. I Never mind didn’t know different, I couldn’t know different.

What many in the south don’t understand, though, is that this culture wasn’t about loyalty to unionism per se (or Communism, as I’m sure many thought). It was the fact that everyone knew someone who had lost their job as a direct result of Thatcherism, and few people could see any of the positive effect felt by the ‘Essex men’ that Loadsamoney satirised.

Not just this either. Men lost jobs, and sons and daughters lost any hope of ever having a job. The ‘benefit reliant’ culture the Tories so despise now was created by the Tories in the 1980s. The great towns and cities of the North were created during the industrial revolution by the influx of people escaping rural starvation and deprivation. For most songle-industry towns of the North, Margaret Thatcher returned them to this state.

However, let’s not kid ourselves. The other Myth of Thatcher in the North is that she destroyed all industry single-handedly.

“Don’t lean on it, love, the bonnet will fall in”. Lots of British industry was in trouble before the 1980s.

This is simply not true. Nationalisation started during the war and powered Britain back to health in the 1950s, but the peace and prosperity of the 60s also started gloablisation. As a trading nation, Britain more than any other could not remain parochial. The Japanese managed to make huge inroads in the UK car market through the simple innovation of building cars which did not fall to pieces after a few years, as most British cars did. Steel existed in Sheffield due to its closeness to the raw materials, but new methods, cheaper transport, and cheaper wages elsewhere was starting to make mass manufacturing in Britain uncompetitive. The Germans noticed this and moved towards precision and specialist engineering. Sheffield did this too (Firth Rixon and Forgemasters excel in this), but much too late.

Coal, though. Maybe that’s a different issue.

Britain led the world in coal production, and the Coal Board had invested in new methods and machinery in the 1960s & 70s (Tungsten Carbide Drills, anyone?). The things that set coal apart was the collective power of its Trade Unions.Despite what we were told to think in the 1980s, Trade Unionism is a wonderful thing. It fought for improvements in safety and treatment of workers that are now taken for granted in all industries. It raised standards for every single person in Britain. It created the NHS. It even created the Cooperative movement which yielded well-run local savings and loans that were later turned unto voracious investment banks during the Big Bang! And in mining at least, these gains were not a Victorian thing – they happened in the 20th century during the lifetimes of many of the workers caught up in the Miners’ strike of the 1980s.

Here’s something that my Dad might disown me for, though. The NUM were wrong. Thatcher took on the unions because of their power in general – their power in a politically opposite direction to hers – but she was able to succeed with public opinion partly due to the 3 day week etc… but also because the NUM became undemocratic. You can very easily make the case that Arthur Scargill was fully vindicated – mines were being targeted for closure for political and not economic reasons, but by denying a vote and wielding collective power individually, the NUM simply confirmed all the fears the press had been propagating – this was an attempted Communist takeover of Britain (a ridiculous theory, but I’ve already heard many Tory commentators over the last few days essentially saying this very thing).

So, Arthur Scargill is maybe not the great hero of the miners, but Thatcher is still the villain. It was still personal. You only have workers’ unions if they have work, so she put them out of work. The evidence of this is that if you want to move the country on economically, you work on putting something else in place, and you wind the industry down slowly. Within 10 years of the miners’ strike, virtually all deep coal mines had closed. Were they uneconomical? I don’t have the knowledge to say this, but what I do know is that David Cameron is touring the world desperately looking for something we can export to the developing world. As I write this, I am sat on it.

Are Banks the new NUM?

So the NUM allowed Thatcher to succeed by becoming undemocratic, but at least they were on some level democratic. Any miner could join the NUM. Not anyone can get on the board of a major multi-national bank. You can buy shares, but how much influence does that really give you? Fred Goodwin answered to no-one, just like Arthur Scargill. But even if the Unions were trying to bring down Britain, or turn it Communist, or whatever they claimed at the time, they didn’t do even half as well as the banking industry – unleashed by Thatcher’s policies to replace industry in the country’s economic makeup – have done. Maybe someone else can tell me if it was even possible for the whole of British heavy industry in 1980s to have lost nearly £30bn in a single year, as RBS did in 2009. But have the Government sent the police and armed militias in to Canary Wharf, as it did at Orgreave in 1984? I think you know the answer.

Conclusion

I thought I had become pretty sanguine about Thatcherism over the years.

Sure, I’d enjoy a good game ‘The Thatcher Blame Game” with any pure blue Tories I associate with (this is where you seek to blame Margaret Thatcher for any of today’s ills, no matter how illogical. It really riles them up), but I stopped blaming her in reality for everything years ago (that’s what actually meeting and talking to Tories can do for you – take note South Yorkshire). However, reading this post (a bit of a stream of consciousness piece) it seems I still am pretty bitter after all.

And I’ve had a pretty nice life. I even work in financial services (oh, there’s no need to boo).

Imagine how someone who was really affected by the turmoil feels…

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/death-of-the-bogeyman-musings-on-the-death-of-margaret-thatcher/feed/0alhodgBlue IronNot so AllegroCan Marketing Save Milk?https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/can-marketing-save-milk/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/can-marketing-save-milk/#commentsFri, 20 Jul 2012 08:02:56 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=143]]>I have a lot of sympathy for the current protests by farmers about the pressure on their bottom line. I’m sure it’s a horrible position to know that all your hard work – often built on years of knowledge and tradition – is essentially bankrupting you.

However, this is not a first. This issue of supermarket price pressure has been rumbling on for years:

Farmers aren’t very effusive people, and the National Farmers Union doesn’t seem to be a protest organisation, so such protest really are a sign of desperation for these people. However, whilst raising public awareness may help a little, protest rarely wins out over economics. The public wants cheap milk. The supermarkets want to supply it. That won’t change.

But if protest won’t work, what will?

1. Refuse to supply

The obvious option would be to refuse to supply – en bloc. I don’t know much about the logistics of importing milk, but it would seem difficult for all the UK’s fresh milk to come from abroad. Back in 2010 raw milk was only traded across the UK border from Ireland into Northern Ireland. It’s a hard option, and could be a long game, but sometimes a line has to be drawn.

The difficulty here, though, is the farmers’ own conservatism. As mentioned above, I don’t see the National Farmers Union as an effective Trade Union, in the traditional sense – at least, I haven’t heard from an NFU representative yet in the press (again, please comment and correct me if I am wrong – I presume they lobby behind the scenes in some way?). Without that power of unity, there’ll always be some bastard waiting to undercut the other.

So without that option, how can farmers solve the conundrum? Well, maybe marketing can help.

2. Move up the supply chain

The supermarkets may be taking all the public flack here, but as this graphic suggests (I have not researched the source data, but thanks to @OurCowMolly for the reference) the processors have a large part of the value chain, taking up some of that money the supermarket pays, which could go direct to farmers:

The Milk Production Value Chain

A standard tenet of marketing strategy is that is you are a manufacturer of a mature product, eventually your margin will disappear as your product becomes commoditised. When this happens, you either need to diversify (eg/ find something else to farm) or move up the value chain.

I cannot find a reference for this, but I was reading that in Sheffield milk processing was done cooperatively, with a fair price, until the processing plant was taken over by Wiseman, with resulting reduction in price paid to farmers (sources anyone?).

Economically, a bigger processing plant makes sense, as it can reduce overall costs of production. The problem is, however, exactly that mentioned above – you come onto the radar of the big boys.

However, from what I can find out, milk processing is not a particularly complicated process, and not reliant on the kind of advanced manufacturing processes that requires a large cost infrastructure. Machinery is easily available.

Perhaps farmers processing their own milk and supply directly to their local supermarkets is an option? Sure, it will require change, investment, and negotiation, but cutting out the processors gives the potential to offer supermarkets an equal price, but with more money to the farmer?

Now, this is such an obvious solution, it must have been tried (and failed?) so I invite people to comment and let me know why this doesn’t work.

3. Build a brand

A bottle of Tesco body spray is about 99p. A bottle of Lynx is about £3. Both are smells in a can. The difference is brand value. It’s a hard and nebulous concept to understand and implement, but all you really need is a marketer, a budget, and a design agency (and a consistent taste – this bit may be the hardest bit. again, not enough knowledge to say.

This is already happening in the milk industry with Cravendale‘s irreverent adverts squarely aimed at generating demand through teenagers for a branded milk product. Cravendale is owned by Arla, one of the processors, and presumably helps them get more profit from supermarket distribution.

Competing against Cravendale’s budgets would be hard for farmers, but a ‘Fair Trade’ type brand may not. This type of branding works similar to the ‘Intel Inside‘ style of marketing, where it can be carried by the users/distributors themselves to add value to their own products by guaranteeing the ‘fairness’ (in terms of price and condition) given to the producers.

This approach would seem ideal given the current scenario. Why is their a ‘Fair Trade’ icon for Kenyan coffee or Chilean wine, but not British milk?

Based on this graphic (again, thanks to @OurCowMolly for the reference) Sainsbury’s, Waitrose et al would jump at the chance to get added social kudos for giving a decent price, and with supermarket wars as they are, if their ‘Fair Trade’ milk tempted consumers to pay a little more, the others would soon follow.

So what do you need to kick this kind of thing off. Well, will, really.

Maybe while today’s protests are going on, the farmers can discuss the minimum standards of production they are willing to commit to (eg/ adding some schtick in about treating cattle well will play well with liberals), come up with a logo, and start lobbying the public direct with the idea.

Supermarkets obviously don’t listen their supplier, but they do listen to their customers. You’ve got the public’s attention – use it.

There’s been a lot of press around the Facebook share flotation recently, a lot of it negative, both before and after the flotation.

Most of it centres on the monumental valuation, and the amount they were looking for per share. Many analysts asked how you could justify such a high valuation when Facebook were only making around $3 per user in actual revenue.

Talking about ignoring the bleeding obvious. Yeah, maybe it started overpriced – the market soon sorted that out – but what would you rather invest in:

1. A mature company with mature products and customer base looking for capital to expand still further, into unknown territory, perhaps, or

2. A new and energetic company that has spent years building a massive customer base (900 million, in fact) and has barely scratched the surface of captialising on these customers?

Starting from that low point of around $4 revenue per customer per year, the potential for growth is absolutely enournous. And, Facebook has shown in the past that in this new online age, you can try something, fail, and move on pretty quickly without people really noticing. In many ways, the more failures you can have, and get over, the more successes you’re likely to have.

I think many observers also thought “they aren’t making much money from Advertising, and there may not be much room for advertising growth, so how can they grow revenue”?

This fundamentally misunderstands the what Facebook offers. As I stated in a previous blog, Advertising is just a tiny part of where Facebook could head. In reality, the company who really needs to be quaking are not other social media outlets, but Amazon. If Facebook has the potential to get products people want in front of them when they are not looking for them – a big jump on sites like Amazon where you have to be looking for something to be exposed to other potential purchases.

Indeed, the natural continuation of this thought is that Amazon needs to become a much more social experience. Maybe then facebook would have a real rival. At this point it doesn’t. I await the next move with baited breath.

I suppose that’s one way to look at it, but it seems a little to me like solving the wrong problem the wrong way.

Certainly change is needed, but by acting in a different way the Government could help solve the problem from the other end – by removing demand on our nation’s roads by enabling people to move around less.

The Government’s other major infrastructure project involves highways of a different sort – information superhighways (for those under 20, that’s what the internet was known as in the 90s) – and strangely, improvements with this kind of highway could help ease congestion on the other.

Investing in broadband speeds and coverage is one thing (and welcomed) but as with all these infrastructure projects (roads, internet, HS2 rail) you get the impression the emphasis is well and truly on helping the businesses – the employers – and not the employees. It is a Tory Government, after all.

Lets look at the problem, though. Congestion. What causes it and why?

The fact that rush hour exists suggests that the bulk of congestion at peak times is from people getting to and from work, especially in large towns and cities. Yes, some of that is already non commuting traffic – trucks, deliveries etc… – but the impact of the jobbing commuter on traffic can be seen by how quiet (and usable and enjoyable) roads become during school holidays. Clearly these journeys are ‘non-critical’ if they can be stopped for 2 weeks during the summer.

This is where the Government can help lessen the number of cars on the road – by encouraging employers to make work-from-home easier. Obviously this doesn’t work for everyone, but how many basic office jobs could really not be fulfilled in the same way from home?

Even when at work, the majority of my meetings these days are by telephone or video conference. The majority of interactions I have are by phone or email. Yes, I do need to see people in person from time to time – nothing beats a personal meeting to really get things done, but in my current Marketing role, probably one day a week would be enough for this. For me and many like me, the option to work some of my working week from home would be advantageous – especially as my weekly commute costs me over £50 in petrol alone!

Let’s also look at other forms of ‘optional’ congestion. Moving goods around in trucks and vans can’t be solved by the internet, yet (though 3D printer tech is coming soon) so who else is on the road in between rush hour? Businessmen, sales men, rushing from meeting to meeting. Can’t you use Skype more? Using video links would be especially favourable for businesses in hard to get to rural areas and the UK’s extremities, such as the north of Scotland, East Anglia and the cornish peninsula, and here again the Government has shown positive action in trying to get more rural areas connected. But what about going a step further and giving away free or subsidised webinar packages to small and rural businesses? What would the cost be to the Government of a couple of cameras and mikes, and some subsidised high-speed internet?

The UK has adopted internet shopping in a big way in the last few years, and broadband traffic predicted to double year on year in the UK in upcoming years (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/broadband/3344355/broadband-internet-traffic-will-double-year-on-year/), but has business – and the Government – really grasped the impact, the beneficial impact, this could have on society? They, like so many others, are still so locked in to the 20th century notion that the more fuel you burn, the more work you’re doing, and the more benefit you are having on the economy and society. Too many cars? Make more room so we can have more cars! Well, how about clear ‘optional’ journeys off the road so that roads, and motorways in particular, are used solely by vehicles that do make the nation tick – trucks and vans.

And before you mention that the Government is naturally hamstrung by being behoven to big business, well, which is the ‘big’ business we would rather encourage them to take money from – oil companies that are killing the planet and driving us towards a Mad Max future (exaggerating for rhetorical effect, obviously) or telecommuncations companies, who allows us to do what comes natural to all humans – communicate?

Let’s have some vision, Cameron, that goes beyond straightforward economic policies from the 1950s and tries to look forward to the post-industrial internet age we will all be living in by the time this recession ends.

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/more-money-for-more-roads-wrong-solution-to-wrong-problem/feed/3alhodgShould we build more roads, or reduce demand?Tesco + Facebook = The end of high street shopping?https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/tesco-facebook-the-end-of-high-street-shopping/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/tesco-facebook-the-end-of-high-street-shopping/#respondThu, 01 Mar 2012 21:07:00 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=118]]>According to the wordcloud on my blog, two of the things I like talking about the most are Tesco and Facebook, so there’s no surprise that this article caught my attention:

In one of my previous posts, I posited the idea that as soon as large retailers, like Tesco, start to properly adapt to and exploit social media channels like Facebook, all forms of physical shopping – malls and out of town, too, not just the High Street – would be in real trouble.

“People still like to meet people, and clothes shopping particularly requires physical interaction, and is a very social experience, but FB is so near to being able to offer a similar experience that the shopping malls – especially the smaller regional ones – should really start to worry. Just as malls killed off the High Street, maybe online will kill off the mall?”

Well, today’s announcement seems to even begin to tackle this basic need for ‘physical interaction’ by taking it all online. I think it’s interesting that Tesco in particular have developed this ‘online fitting room’ given that I’m not sure they even have physical fitting rooms in their stores. Theirs is not high fashion – it’s based on “it’s cheap, so even if it doesn’t fit me properly, it’s no real loss”, so really Tesco are looking to radically increase the levels of social interaction involved in buying their clothes. Do you know anyone who’s ever been on a genuine clothes shopping trip, with friends, to a supermarket?

This is why this announcement is a double threat to physical shopping. Not only are they looking to move clothes shopping online, by launching on Facebook and including social sharing, they are looking to directly attack the ‘social shopping’ experiences that traditional fashion outlets like River Island, H&M & Topshop (forgive me if I’m out of touch with female fashion brands – I’m a 32 year old man) can offer. Forget that Tesco currently sell manky clothes – this can easily change, and the power of market research information they will get from social sharing and commenting will help them do this rapidly (note how Primark managed to gain press attention by offering a few ‘designer’ items in amongst their other pap).

The High Street is a 70s concept that was destroyed by the Mall in the 90s. Now the combination of a severe and long-lasting recession, and the maturation of online retail across a wide range of sectors and age groups, will I believe, start to kill off the Mall by the time the decade’s out.

Physical spaces have to think of something else to do. Something that is unique, that there is a high demand for in the UK, but an undersupply. Something which is highly social, but definitely requires the physical body to experience.

I’ve got 2 words for you.

Water.

Park.

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/tesco-facebook-the-end-of-high-street-shopping/feed/0alhodgThe Marketing Lighthousehttps://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the-marketing-lighthouse/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the-marketing-lighthouse/#respondFri, 28 Oct 2011 10:23:25 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=107]]>In many of the places I have worked people have put time and effort into developing new products, new services etc…solely in response to the competitive environment, such as new competitor products or pricing structures.

Obviously it’s important to respond to what’s going on ‘out there’ but often the money and manpower allocated to the ‘new’ propositions takes resource away from the core products and services, which are often what you customers are really interested (especially in these straightened times).

It can be a brave thing to do to when your competitors are rushing around with ‘new’ stuff to do what you already do, but better. It can lack visibility publicly, but won’t go unnoticed by your existing customers.

Anyway, being a fan of wanky business-speak and aide memoirs, the idea of spending as much time critically examining your own business than other put me in mind of of lighthouse. It’s primary job is to look outwards and shine it’s light on potential danger, but for every sweep of its beam, it also casts its light internally, on land.

So, I give you – the Marketing Lighthouse!

The Marketing Lighthouse

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the-marketing-lighthouse/feed/0alhodgMarketing LighthousePlurchase – short follow up to last week’s post on Facebook as an online mall.https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/plurchase-short-follow-up-to-last-weeks-post-on-facebook-as-an-online-mall/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/plurchase-short-follow-up-to-last-weeks-post-on-facebook-as-an-online-mall/#respondSun, 02 Oct 2011 14:19:07 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=97]]>Following up from last week’s blog on how Facebook will always be free, and it’s likely next direction towards being an online version of a shopping mall, I recently found reference to a service called ‘Plurchase’ which seems to already be doing this.

It’s essentially a sidebar for Amazon and similar online shopping sites, where you can invite friends to ‘shop’ with you, and all can comment via text on the various items you’re currently browsing.

I can see this being useful for people discussing Xmas present lists, or for distant parents and offspring to have some ‘social’ time together, but I think until something like this integrates with video and sound the real ‘social’ aspect will be limited, and with Facebook now tied to Skype, I’d still back FB to get there first.

As far as I can see, this is currently US only, so if anyone has any experience of Plurchase, I’d be interested to find out what it’s like.

I didn’t need to google it to know it was a hoax because charging for access goes fundamentally against Facebook’s money-making proposition both now and in the future. They’ve just gone past 800m active users on the back of being free, and whilst this has its own value in terms of advertising and online games, that’s just the start of it.

Facebook’s ambition is to become the first World Mall – an online shopping and leisure destination for everyone.

Think of the USPs of shopping malls:

All the shops you need in one place

Leisure destinations like Cinema and Restaurants to make it a social experience to be enjoyed in groups

Of those 3, it is the third which is most powerful, as this is what differentiates a mall significantly from the High Street. This is what makes many malls a weekly destination for families and friends – it’s easy and free. You don’t even necessarily go to buy some stuff, but while you’re there…

Now consider what would happen to those decisions if your local mall charged you £3 each to get in, or £7 per car to park. This might still be cheaper than a trip to town, but the thought of paying to access would mean you would only go when you had the express intent of doing a decent sized shop, or spending a long time there. Footfall would decline, and so would income in the shops, and it probably wouldn’t offset the amount being taken in in charges.

This is exactly how Facebook operates. By being free, and offering some basic functionality of use to subscribers, FB ensures people come back again and again and again, and in doing so, their opportunity to to sell to you increases.

Currently FB makes its money from the targeted pay-per-click ads down the right side of your profile, and from monetised online games such as gambling or those games where you buy a cow for your farm or something. However, FB are relatively few stages away from being a one-stop shopping and leisure destination – an online mall.

In fact, I reckon they are only 3 or so tie-ins away from achieving this. Consider the following Facebook additions:

– Paypal tie in (for ease of online payment – not sure their own currency ever took off other than for game obsessives)
– Spotify & Flixster tie in – rights issues are the big stumbling block, but having HD movie streaming from Flixster with live FB comment box (or Skype connection) would allow people to essentially go to the cinema together on Facebook. Spotify is struggling to cover its costs with advertising alone, but if it was FB’s primary way to listen to & buy music, it would soon start making money.
– Tesco Online via FB – in the UK, if FB got Tesco Direct plugged in to FB, that alone would drive all other retail brands onto FB (just looked and Tesco only have 300k followers on FB – this is appallingly bad considering their customer base).

People still like to meet people, and clothes shopping particularly requires physical interaction, and is a very social experience, but FB is so near to being able to offer a similar experience that the shopping malls – especially the smaller regional ones – should really start to worry. Just as malls killed off the High Street, maybe online will kill off the mall?

]]>https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/fb-hoax-the-online-mall-and-why-facebook-will-never-charge-you/feed/1alhodgThe PolyPill – an analogy for NHS reform, and the efficiency mythhttps://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-polypill-an-analogy-for-nhs-reform-and-the-efficiency-myth/
https://alhodg.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/the-polypill-an-analogy-for-nhs-reform-and-the-efficiency-myth/#respondMon, 30 May 2011 21:16:12 +0000http://alhodg.wordpress.com/?p=82]]>Some medical authors have called for all over-55s to be given cholesterol lowering drugs as a more cost-effective route to a better outcome for all:

Thinking through how this proposal might be applied, and the alternative, highlights an interesting point about the advantages and disadvantages of policy ‘for the many’ or ‘for the greater good’, as against the concept of choice as preferred by successive Governments with regard to the NHS.

The concept of choice as a positive is embedded in our culture, with regarding commerce and capitalism. Choice ensures money get’s to where demand (or need) is greatest, and drives down cost by encouraging competition etc, etc…you know the deal.

This is the concept that many believe will help the behemoth of the NHS move its enourmous budget to where need is greatest, and make sure those treatments also become cheaper.

However, in healthcare there’s an additional complication – the greater good. Most people in the UK still hold by the ideas behind the NHS, even if not the reality – eg/ that the overall idea is to try and raise the overall health of the entire population in all areas. Part of this can mean spending money where it isn’t necessarily ‘needed’, such as in preventative medicine, or in associated schemes such as education (to promote contraception, healthy lifestyles etc..)

In current policy thinking, anything which is decided and impemented across the board is called ‘inefficient’. They call it this because some of the money will be wasted on people who don’t need what is offered, or people of differing needs get the same treatment.

This is true. However, does this necessarily mean it is inefficient? Efficiency actually relates to the overall outcome measured against the overall effort put in (time, money, energy etc…). Whilst everyone abhores waste, waste can be part of an efficient outcome.

And so we come to the research on the Polypill. Unlike current thinking, it makes the simple conclusion that sometimes mandating a treatment, rather than giving people choice, can be more efficient. Some will feel the effect more than others, and there will be waste and side effects, but sometimes when given choice, people decide against things that are good for themselves, and for the population as a whole. Note the recent rapid rise in Measles on the back of parents choosing not to give their children the MMR jab, and thereby exposing their own and other children to an horrendous and easily preventable disease.

I’m not necessarily against ‘efficiency’ based reforms, just the concept that choice automatically creates efficiency. It doesn’t.